My stomach has stopped growling.
That should terrify me more than it does. Three days without food - three days of watching Kael eat elaborate meals while I kneel beside his chair, close enough to smell honey-glazed meat and wine-poached fruits but forbidden to touch. My body has moved past hunger into something else entirely, a hollow ache that makes my thoughts drift like smoke.
"You're trembling," Kael observes from his place by the window. Morning light catches the sharp angles of his face, carving him from marble and shadow.
I am. My hands shake as I try to fold them in my lap, vision swimming when I turn my head too quickly. But I won't ask. Won't beg.
"Hunger is such an... educational experience," he continues, moving to the side table where servants have left his breakfast. The smell hits me like a physical blow - warm bread, sweet pastries, rich cream. "It teaches us what we truly value. What we're willing to sacrifice for survival."
He tears off a piece of honey cake, golden crumbs falling to the floor like scattered coins. My mouth floods with saliva at the sight of food so close yet impossibly far.
"Come here, Pet."
I rise on unsteady legs, the room tilting before steadying. Each step feels like walking through deep water, my limbs heavy and strange.
Kael holds out the piece of cake, honey glistening on his pale fingers. "Open."
The word is silk and steel, command wrapped in gentleness. I stare at the morsel - so small, barely a bite - and know this is another test. Another way to break me down, piece by piece, until there's nothing left but grateful submission.
But I'm so desperately hungry that my pride feels like a luxury I can no longer afford.
I part my lips.
He places the cake on my tongue with careful precision, his fingers brushing my mouth in a touch that's almost tender. The sweetness explodes across my taste buds - honey and almonds, butter and vanilla - and I have to bite back a moan of pure relief.
"Good pet," he murmurs, and there's something in his voice I haven't heard before. Warmth, maybe. Or satisfaction at my surrender. "You've earned this."
He feeds me another piece, then another, each morsel a small mercy that makes my empty stomach clench with gratitude I hate feeling. His fingers linger against my lips longer than necessary, thumb tracing the corner of my mouth where honey has gathered.
"Better?" he asks, and I nod before I can stop myself.
"Yes, Master. Thank you."
The words taste like ash, but they're true. I am grateful - pathetically, desperately grateful for these few bites of food from his hand. The realization makes me sick, but not sick enough to refuse when he offers another piece.
"Such lovely manners," he says, settling back into his chair. "You're learning so well."
He dismisses me with a wave, and I return to my corner on shaking legs, the taste of honey still sweet on my tongue. But as I sink onto the furs, I catch something in his expression - a flicker of what might be regret, or perhaps disappointment.
As if he's sorry I gave in so easily.
*****
The next evening arrives like a storm cloud, heavy with anticipation I don't understand until dinner is served in his chambers. Not in the great hall this time, but here, intimate and private, with me kneeling beside his chair as usual.
Except tonight, there's no morsel from his fingers. No dropped crumb or careful sharing.
Tonight, I watch.
Course after course arrives - roasted fowl that falls off the bone, vegetables glazed in butter, bread so fresh it steams when broken. Wine flows ruby-dark in crystal glasses, and desserts arrive like edible jewels: tarts topped with berries, custards rich as silk, chocolates that melt on the tongue.
I know because I can see everything. Smell everything. My stomach clenches and growls, the brief reprieve of yesterday's honey cakes now just a memory. Saliva pools in my mouth as I watch him cut into a piece of meat, pink juices running across the plate.
"Are you enjoying the show, Pet?" he asks conversationally, not looking at me as he takes another bite.
I don't answer. Can't answer around the hunger clawing at my insides like a living thing.
"I find dining so much more pleasurable with company," he continues, reaching for a strawberry tart. "Even silent company."
He bites into the tart, cream filling oozing out the sides, and makes a soft sound of pleasure that shouldn't affect me but does. Everything about this moment is designed to torment - the sounds, the smells, the casual cruelty of abundance displayed before starvation.
"You know," he says, pausing with another forkful halfway to his mouth, "I could share. All you have to do is ask."
The words hang between us like a trap. I know what he wants - to hear me beg. To watch pride crumble under the weight of basic need. To reduce me to an animal whimpering for scraps.
"I'm not hungry," I lie, the words barely a whisper.
He laughs, low and rich. "No? How fascinating. Here I thought starvation was a universal human experience."
He takes another bite, chewing slowly, savoring each morsel while my empty stomach cramps with want. The cruelty is exquisite in its simplicity - not the sharp pain of a whip or brand, but the slow torture of watching life continue while you fade away piece by piece.
"You're stronger than the others," he says suddenly, setting down his fork. "They all begged by the second day. Wept and pleaded and promised me anything for just a taste."
Others. Always others. Seven girls who wore this collar, knelt in this spot, and finally broke under the weight of his games.
"But not you," he continues, turning in his chair to look at me fully. "Even now, with your hands shaking and your eyes hollow with hunger, you won't ask. Won't break."
He sounds almost... impressed. Pleased, even.
"It makes me wonder what you're hiding, Pet. What strength you're drawing from that the others lacked."
I meet his gaze, putting every ounce of defiance I can muster into my eyes. "Maybe I'm just stubborn."
"Maybe," he agrees, but there's something else in his voice now. Something hungry that has nothing to do with food. "Or maybe you're something else entirely."
He rises from his chair and moves to kneel beside me, close enough that I can smell wine on his breath and see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. Close enough that when he speaks, I feel the words against my skin.
"Tell me, Pet," he whispers, fingers ghosting along my jaw. "What are you?"
The question sends ice through my veins. There's something in the way he asks it - not rhetorical, but searching. As if he genuinely doesn't know and that uncertainty both fascinates and terrifies him.
"I'm whatever you want me to be," I answer, letting just a hint of challenge creep into my voice.
"No," he says, thumb tracing my lower lip. "You were something before I found you. Something that calls to me in ways I don't understand."
His touch is gentle, almost reverent, and I have to fight not to lean into it. Not to seek comfort from the very hand that's been starving me.
"When I look at you," he continues, voice dropping to barely more than breath, "I see prey. But I also see predator. I see submission."
The words hit too close to something buried deep inside me, some half-remembered dream of silver moonlight and wild freedom. I pull back, breaking the spell of his touch.
"You see what you want to see."
"Do I?" He stands, towering over me in the firelight. "Then tell me, Pet - why does your blood sing on my tongue like nothing I've ever tasted? Why do I dream of silver eyes and midnight hunts? Why does touching you feel like coming home to something I never knew I'd lost?"
My heart stops. He's been feeding from me - when? How? I don't remember-
"While you sleep," he says, reading the question in my eyes. "Just a taste. Just enough to satisfy my curiosity. But it only made me hungrier."
The revelation should horrify me. Instead, it explains the strange dreams, the mornings when I wake feeling drained, the way he sometimes looks at me like I'm a puzzle with missing pieces.
"You taste like wildness," he whispers, kneeling again, this time close enough that our faces are inches apart. "Like moonlight and ancient forests and something so old it has no name. Not human, Pet. Never human."
"Then what am I?" The question escapes before I can stop it, raw and desperate.
His smile is sharp as winter wind. "That's what makes this so delicious. Neither of us knows."
He stands and returns to his meal, leaving me kneeling in the gathering darkness with revelation crashing over me like waves. Not human. The words echo in my mind, explaining so much and yet nothing at all.
"Finish your dinner, Master," I say finally, voice steady despite the chaos in my chest. "I'll wait."
Because that's what pets do. They wait. They endure. They survive on scraps of kindness and feast on cruelty until they can't tell the difference anymore.
But as I kneel there in the firelight, watching him eat while my stomach clenches with hunger, I finally understand the game he's playing.
It's not about breaking me.
It's about discovering what I am when all the human pieces are stripped away.